'Past Lives New History'

A collage series of reimagined, dream-like sequences

Past Lives, New Layers explores the friction between memory and imagination—where vintage street scenes, clipped from forgotten magazines, are reborn in surreal, abstract compositions. By layering figures of the past into bold new contexts, each collage becomes a portal to a reimagined history—part truth, part dream, entirely untethered from time.

Jon Fielding

There’s something hypnotic about old magazine street scenes — men in crisp hats, women in elegant postures, cities humming in black and white. They whisper stories frozen in time. But what happens when we disturb that stillness, tearing these characters from their vintage frames and placing them in bold, abstract compositions?

My latest series 'Past Lives, New Layers' explores just that.

By contrasting documentary-style imagery with chaotic, painterly layers — color fields, brutal cut-outs, surreal overlays — I aim to disrupt nostalgia and reframe memory. These aren't just past lives on parade; they’re recontextualized personas navigating imagined realities. A 1950s pedestrian might now float across acid-orange shapes. A mid-century Parisian avenue might melt into ink and fractured geometry.

This tension—between the literal and the lyrical—makes space for new interpretations. Who were these people? What if they existed outside their moment in time? The collage becomes a dialogue, not a monument.

For fellow artists: consider hunting down overlooked details in your vintage sources — a crooked tie, a sideways glance—and build a new visual world around that fragment. Let abstraction bend the rules of history. Let old souls walk new paths.

Painted by Light

Landscapes Re-born

Landscapes Recoloured and Reborn is a visual exploration of transformation—where familiar terrains are stripped of their natural palettes and reimagined through bold digital colour manipulation. In this series, drawn from Chromatic Fictions, the landscape becomes a stage for emotional and spectral reinterpretation. Light is exaggerated, hues are shifted, and the real is pushed into the realm of illusion. What was once documentary becomes dreamscape—inviting viewers to see not just a place, but a sensation.

Theatre of the Unreal: Scenes of an Imagined Play is a physical collage art series that reanimates characters from vintage theatrical ephemera—actors, costumes, and stage fragments—into surreal, dreamlike compositions. Removed from their original scripts and sets, these figures are recast in strange new worlds built from cut paper, fractured architecture, and abstract forms. Each piece becomes a scene from a play that never existed, where narrative unravels and logic gives way to atmosphere. The result is both theatrical and uncanny—a visual fiction where memory, performance, and fantasy collide on an invented stage.

Theatre of the Unreal

Original collage series

Jon's work beautifully merges photography and collage, creating a captivating visual experience. His portfolio is a testament to his artistic vision and dedication to his craft.

Sarah F

★★★★★